


Postcards

by Petronia



Series: Private Beach [4]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, New York, Post-Series, Post-Tennis, Rimbaud, Travelogue, belgium - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-15
Updated: 2005-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A loose series of vignettes in which Tezuka and Fuji go places and have conversations, à la Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (but to less pointed effect).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brussels

All street and many commercial signs were bilingual. Flemish split the difference between English and German, close enough that he could muddle along in comprehension. Fuji preferred the French, characteristically. This led to disjunctive situations where neither of them knew where the other was heading, whether they were together or apart.

Fuji bought Turkish delight from a sweets shop on Grasmarkt (or as he called it,  _Marché aux herbes_  – Greengrocer's Market), a two-minute walk from the Grote Markt. The shop interior was torn from a corner of Marrakesh by way of Delacroix, all shadowy arched doorways and walls of aquamarine tile. The shopkeeper was an ample woman with kohl-lined eyes who weighed out half a dozen pieces of candy from the stack Fuji indicated, using a gleaming brass balance scale, swept the pile into a paper bag with something resembling a letter opener and handed it to him in exchange for three euro.

Later, back on the sidewalk of the gleaming white European city and under the sun, Fuji tore into the bag and began munching happily. "Would you like one, Tezuka?" he asked after the second piece.

"I'll pass," said Tezuka. Even the idea was revolting.

"They're much better than the kind that comes in boxes."

"I'll pass."

"These are apple flavoured," said Fuji, "but they're not green. They're the colour of applesauce." He smiled and held up a hand. "I know, I know. Don't tell me."

The Grote Markt (indeed the entire area) was a tourist trap – down to its walled box shape – but an effective one. They decided to return after dark and have a drink at one of the cafés. The light might provide Fuji's camera with more of a challenge, then.

"I can't outdo the picture postcards," Fuji said cheerfully.

That morning he'd spent a quarter of an hour on the portal of the Church of Our Lady of the Sablon, taking photographs of the massed rows of saints, each ensconced in his or her niche of laceworked sandstone.

The stores sold souvenirs, chocolate, or lace. A winding street or so down Fuji ducked into a lace shop that much resembled the others, saying he needed to get something for his sister. Tezuka followed. The inside of the store was narrow and whitewashed, lined with cabinets and display cases. Every surface was covered with samples of lace objects: tableclothes, handkerchiefs, place settings, bottle holders, blouses, vests, christening dresses, caps, doilies, umbrellas, dolls' clothing...

An older man had preceded them into the store. He spoke with a British accent, asking to examine this or that, and for one of the dolls to be taken out of its display case. The two middle-aged women tending the till complied with his requests while Fuji was allowed to browse unmolested. He showed a particular interest in the embroidered lavender sachets.

"Or perhaps the folding fruit basket things," he said to Tezuka. "What do you think?"

"I hate you!" said one of the women in English, suddenly. Tezuka turned around. He didn't think he had been the one thus addressed – her tone had been one of familiar fury – but there was no other customer in the store besides himself and Fuji. The other man had left without him noticing. The woman was staring out into space, at no one in particular.

"Oh God, I hate you," she was saying. As Tezuka watched she knelt and began opening, rifling through and slamming each drawer in the cabinet before her in turn, as if she'd been ordered to search for some object and the task was driving her to frustrated rage. "I'm sick of you! You make me so mad! You diseased son of a whore!"

"I'd like this one and this one," said Fuji to the cashier. She smiled at him serenely.

"Seventeen euro and fifty cents," she said.

Fuji smiled back and reached for his wallet.

"Monkeyfucking motherhumper!" the other woman screamed.

Tezuka went outside. There was a plaque on the whitewashed side of the building, but it was only in French. He scanned it, trying to make out the gist.

"There you are," Fuji said, exiting the shop with yet another paper bag in hand. "What are you looking at?"

"What does this say?" Tezuka asked. Fuji leant against him so that his hair brushed Tezuka's shoulder.

"'Here stood the Hotel 'A La Ville de Courtrai','" he read slowly, "'where on July 10, 1873, Paul Verlaine wounded Arthur Rimbaud with a revolver shot.' How interesting – I didn't know that happened here."

"They were both poets. Am I right?"

"Yes," said Fuji. "And living together at the time. As unstable a situation as you can imagine."

They descended the street toward the train station. Tezuka dredged his memory; he was sketchy on French symbolists.

"Who was the better poet?" he asked finally.

" _Well,_ " said Fuji appreciatively. "Do you think that was the crux of the matter?"

Tezuka gave him a look.

"Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right. After all they were poets, not lace workers or chocolatiers or professional tennis players."

"If you intend to carry on a Socratic dialogue with yourself—" said Tezuka.

They walked on. A yellow tram car with blue panels clattered past. The buses that ran on the broader avenues were the same colour scheme.

"It's a good question, actually." Fuji popped another piece of Turkish delight into his mouth, chewed, pondered, and swallowed. "Rimbaud was a genius. He was very young – a teenager on a rampage – universally reviled. Who's to say where it all sprang from? There was no context for him. The enormity of what he accomplished did not become apparent until much later, at which point he'd given up literature entirely and fled the continent. He died young."

"And Verlaine?"

"Was a great poet. The French produce them from time to time, like great vintages: out of mud and prayer and the weather."

"Your conclusion?"

"Which generates more light: a bonfire or a magnesium flare?" Fuji shrugged. "Rimbaud has criticism and lovers of doomed bishounen on his side, certainly."

"Let's take the next tram," said Tezuka.

 


	2. Cayuga

"Echizen was right," Fuji said. "This isn't at all like New York City."

He had been silent for an unprecedented forty-five minutes, lying prone on the rear bench of the motorboat with his hand trailing over the side, not quite brushing the surface of the water. Tezuka had begun to assume he'd fallen asleep.

"Of course not," he said, reeled in his bait, and recast.

Cayuga Lake glittered under the sun, the horizon defined by darkly verdant, forested slopes. Toward the northwest the water extended until it met the sky in an undifferentiated blue haze. There were white sails in the distance.

The same light rippled in the bucket at the bottom of the boat, water lapping at the plastic sides with each minute rise and fall of the waves, like a miniaturized version of the lake. Within it something shifted, gleaming darkly, and fell motionless again.

"Isn't Atobe in New York this week?" Fuji said. "You should call him. Get him to come up for the weekend."

"You can't mean that seriously." Once he had accompanied Atobe on a fly fishing expedition. The man's entire attitude changed once his boots were in the water, but with the hullabaloo that went before it was a wonder he didn't frighten the trout permanently from its run.

Fuji considered, and smiled. "No, I suppose I don't." He tapped the side of the bucket. "We should throw these back."

"We won't have anything to eat tonight if you do."

"We still have a few sandwiches left," said Fuji. "And potato chips. And juice."

Silence.

"Sport for sport's sake, surely?"

Still Tezuka said nothing. Fuji lifted the bucket by the handle and heaved the contents over the side. There was a splash – a flash of something dark – a couple of distinct plops.

"You've scared the rest of them off," said Tezuka. Fuji sat back down, brushing his hands against his life jacket.

"Not my fault if news travels fast," he said.


End file.
